


shake off your flesh.

by murgamurg



Category: South Park
Genre: Blood and Gore, Child Abuse, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, Ritual Sacrifice, imp tweek, inspired by the old south, non-modern time period, supersition, unspecified time period, youth pastor craig
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-03-08 00:13:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13446411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murgamurg/pseuds/murgamurg
Summary: Craig knows a boy with blonde hair and a wide smile.





	1. ten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> read the tags please.

 

 

Craig runs after Clyde as they tear down the dirt alley in the space between their houses. The game of tag started when Clyde shouted _you’re it_ and slapped the shit out of Craig’s shoulder before booking it out the back door of Craig’s house. Mrs. Tucker shouted after them, to be back before dinner, she says. They’ll make it back in time. The sun is just cresting its peak and Craig is focused on retaliation, swift and sure.

Clyde swerves down the main street, cut deep by cart wheels and hooved beasts. He sees that Craig is gaining and cackles as he cuts down across the butcher’s lawn.

He vanishes from sight around the building and shouts. Craig stops, panting, his hand on the corner.

Clyde is sprawled in the dirt face down, cursing. He’s run into the butcher’s boy. Craig has never met him, but their fathers are friends. He’s got bright blonde hair and skin that tans in the sun. A wide smile and a gap between his teeth.

He’d been coming around the corner with armsful of feed when Clyde barrelled into him. The bags are now strewn about, one of them split open. The boy himself is flat on his back, hands on his face, wild blonde hair licking the edges of his palms. Craig is afraid he’s crying.

“Clyde, you idiot,” Craig kicks him.

“Sorry, sorry!” He says, catching Craig’s foot before it finds the soft part under his ribs. He shoves himself up and dusts off the dirt. A lot of it sticks to the knees of his jeans, the skin around his elbows.

Clyde sticks out a hand and helps the butcher’s boy to his feet.

“What’s your name?” He asks, picking up the bag that’s split as careful as he can.   

The boy’s voice is hoarse and pitchy. “Uh. Tweek,” he grumbles, and wait, that can’t be right.  That’s the butcher’s name.

“No, your first one,” Craig clarifies.  

The boy shrugs, and moves about to pick up the bags of feed. “I only have one.”

Clyde stops. Cranes his head around the bag in his arms. He and Craig share a look.

“Oh. We’ll call you Tweek then.”

“Sure.” Tweek nods.  

They help him bring the bags into the butcher’s shop. Tweek stacks them against the till and patiently stitches the one Clyde’s snapped open. The boys know he’ll have to explain it to his father later. Mister Tweak, is there, too, somewhere in the back. They can hear him chopping.

“We’re going out to the fields,” Craig says, wiping his hands on his knees.

“Oh,” Tweek tugs on his apron, looking into the hall.

Clyde looks from Craig to Tweek. “Want to come with us?”

Tweek nods, chewing on his lip. He strips his apron and leaves it on top of the feed bags, tailing after the other boys as quiet as he can. They break the outskirts and Clyde smack’s Tweek’s shoulder, almost knocking him over. He shouts _tag you’re it_ and peels off into the tall grass of the hill above the river.

“Hey!” Tweek shouts, indignant, and takes off after him. Craig grins and sprints just behind. He ought to keep up, after all.

They roll in the grass for the rest of the afternoon. Craig ends up late for dinner.

 

* * *

 

They play often, always on that hill up by the river. Sometimes, in the heat of the summer they strip to their bones and jump in the cool water. Craig’s favorite game is _who-can-throw-the-rock-the-farthest._ He usually wins that one. Clyde tells him it’s unfair because his arms are the longest, but Clyde’s favorite game is arm wrestling and he’s the strongest, so he’s not really one to talk.

Tweek likes to make up stories. Sometimes they get lost in his elaborate games, cast off to far away lands there on the riverbank. He and Clyde and Tweek spend lots of time playing, those days.

Sometimes Tweek can’t stay awake because his father makes him work the lost time. Craig and Clyde make an effort to keep better track.

 

* * *

 

The road back from the market is hard packed red clay. It gets slick when it rains but today it’s dry and dusty, coating Craig’s shoes and pants in a fine film.

His father lopes beside him, all long legs and a heavyset belly. A wedding this weekend meant they ought to pick up supplies; some for the church and parish, and some for the bride as a kindness. Thomas carries a few shoulderbags that contain most of the odds and ends. When he looks down to smile at his son, Craig can see the sweat beading off his balding forehead.

Just before town they pass the butcher and his son. Craig perks up and waves despite the long walk. Tweek’s got a worn leather pack slung over his shoulder, stuffed full. It looks heavy, but he doesn’t seem to mind the burden. His father trails a step or two behind him, leading a young sow.

“Richard,” Thomas says, and Craig looks up.

“Thomas,” Richard greets with a calm smile, and their hands clasp. They chat about adult things and Craig pushes at Tweek’s shoulder cause he’s bored.

Tweek pushes back, a loud laugh stuck in his throat, and soon they’re shoving each other roughly back and forth grinning like fools. Craig tries to bean him hard in his arm and Tweek blocks it, but then

“Son,” Richard says, and Tweek stops.

Craig’s paid attention when people talk about Tweek. He doesn’t believe that Tweek only has one name. They call him _the butcher’s boy_ or _that tweak boy_ and his father calls him _son_ , but never any kind of name. He decides that he’s going to find out one day.  

When they part, the Tweaks head off the path, and down toward the river.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading :) im awful at updating regularly but. we'll try this time.
> 
> title taken from 'Shake Off Your Flesh' by The Huntress and The Holder Of Hands.


	2. twelve.

 

 

Clyde bends down and picks up a rock. They’re out in the field again, just them. The sky’s turning pink as the sun gets tired, and Craig lets out a long sigh. Most of his day was spent working with his father as he’s been the past few weeks. Thomas tells him its important. Taking on responsibilities of a preacher’s son, becoming a man.

Craig wishes he could have spent the day on the river instead.

Clyde throws. Clyde doesn’t have anything to worry about so he gets the rock pretty far, almost to the bend. “I saw Tweek yesterday”, he says, after it plops below the surface.

“You did?” Craig hasn’t seen him in a month, not since that day with his dad at the market. He throws a rock and it comes up short.

Clyde picks up another, turning towards Craig. “I think he’s sick.” He says and stops, eyes stuck over Craig’s shoulder.

Craig turns, and there he is. Tweek. But it doesn’t look like Tweek. His skin is pale, scabbed over in places, his eyes sunken and bagged. His shoulders tremble, and Craig’s stomach turns because that’s new, and Clyde’s right. Tweek has to be sick.

“H-hey,” Tweek stutters. His arms seize in a violent twitch. “Hey guys.”

“Hey,” They both say, and turn back to the river. Tweek sits down behind them and mutters to himself in his low, scratchy voice.

Clyde throws another rock and makes it half the distance he did before. He clenches his jaw as he steps back from the river, picks up his bah. “My dad, um. Said he wanted help with something,” Clyde says. “By sundown.”

Craig knows he’s lying, but he doesn’t say anything and waves goodbye as Clyde disappears into the grass.

He throws his last rock (just by the bend, if only Clyde had stayed long enough to see) and sits himself on the bank with Tweek. His spindly fingers weave themselves deeper into his tawny, pallid hair.

“You ok?” Craig asks.

“F-fine. Nothingswrong. Nothing, nothing at all.” Tweek’s eyes are full of fear before he screws them shut.

Craig sits next to him. “Ok,” He says. Something is very, _very_ wrong, but Craig doesn’t know what to do.

He leans against Tweek’s shoulder and pulls apart a twig until the sun sets and they both have to go home.

 

* * *

 

At supper, he asks.

“Is there something wrong with Tweek?”

“Richard’s boy?” His dad says. Wipes his mouth with a napkin. “There may be, son. I’m sure he’ll get better soon.” Thomas gives him a reassuring smile. Craig doesn’t find it very comforting, but he trusts his father’s judgement. He doesn’t press further.  

Every night before bed he has chores to do, like any normal boy his age. He takes out the garbage, turns the compost. Scrubs off the concrete slab they call a back porch before washing dishes. When he’s done with those and they’re all put away, his parents are arguing.

“Saw Randall two nights ago,” Thomas says, in a vehement whisper from the family room. “Says down by the river there was blood, whole buckets full. Just strewn about like a massacre.” He takes a breath. “He’s done something, Laura. Your son was asking after him at dinner, if he was sick.”

Laura huffs. Craig can’t see her, but knows the look on her face.

“He ain’t just sick!” His father’s exasperated. Trying and failing to keep his voice down. ”I seen that boy today and he was a shell of himself. He’s all, twitchin, like somethin’s got a hold of him.”

“There’s no reason to think it was Richard that--”

“We saw them. We saw them heading to the river. Me and Craig, that day we went to market.“

His mother is silent.

Craig slips past them to his bed, and thinks of the thin line across Tweek’s neck, that healed over scar that he’d never noticed before tonight. The terror on his face, down by that river.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	3. fourteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sigh
> 
> this was hard to finish

They don’t go down to the river anymore. 

Instead, Craig seeks out Tweek while he’s working. Craig works too, but work at the church starts later and ends earlier than Tweek’s does. After a day full of paperwork and running errands, he’ll find Tweek cleaning, or scrubbing, or lifting something a boy his age shouldn’t really be able to carry. 

He asks Clyde to come along, sometimes. He never does. 

Today Tweek’s in the pens, mucking out the stalls. Craig sits his ass on the outer wall and wraps his ankles around the slats, still dressed in his church clothes: a button down and slacks. He’s become real good at ignoring the smell. Tweek shovels shit and hay and slings it out, threadbare tank soaked through with sweat from the humid evening air. 

“So what’s this one about?” Craig picks up the book at his side, examines it. Runs his fingers across the covers to feel the deep ridges in the ornately carved wood. 

“That one? O-oh--” Tweek tosses the shovelful out of the pen, dripping with sweat. He wipes his face with his arm and Craig’s eyes get stuck on the sheen of his cheeks, his shoulders. “It’s not really a st-story, It’s more of a … dictionary?” 

“Encyclopedia,” Craig supplies, perusing the pages. 

“Encyc-clopedia,” Tweek repeats with a cascading nod. “Encyclop-pedia, encyclopedia.” 

Craig leafs through the pages. Demons, djinn, davas. The paper is thick and rough under his fingers. 

It’s not the weirdest book that Tweek has tugged around; far from it, actually. Tweek likes to read about rituals and spirits, talk about all sorts of superstition and cryptic pagan notion. Occult things. Craig gets lost in the descriptions of how to summon a distilled spirit for use in a seance, the rules for properly binding a curse using goat’s blood. He categorizes each and every piece of information in his brain because well, he’s curious. Intensely so. 

Craig knows he should never, ever say anything about it to his father. 

He sets the book to his side again. Tweek props up his shovel, wiping his face with a rag that doesn’t do much to clean it. Craig must have read for a while; Tweek’s finished with one stall, but there are four more waiting to be cleaned. 

Craig kicks his heels against the wood. 

“Can I do anything?” He asks, a little bored. 

“S-sure.” Tweek seizes, and then calms. “Take that c-crate up front. Dad asked me to move it earlier.” He pauses, tugs on his hair. “Are you staying for dinner?” He adds, turning back to his work. 

Craig hops up and grabs the crate. It's full of detritus, some metal pieces and wood from a fence, nails still embedded within. Empty liquor bottles rattle against each other. He thinks of his mother, and the bottles she hides around the house.

“Sure,” he mumbles. 

Dinner is full of awkward and meaningless conversation as usual. Afterwards they climb up to the roof and stargaze laid shoulder to shoulder, thatch digging into their backs. 

Craig has always liked the stars, how peaceful they are, how beautiful. Tweek tells him all the legends he knows about them.

 

* * *

 

Craig crosses his arms and leans on the well. He’ll get his suit dirty, but right now it’s the last thing on his mind.  

Tweek should have met him by now. They hang out at least by sunset, usually. Craig’s checked the alleys around his home, the old tree in the fields. Even that old empty shed, over near Tweek’s house -- he’s found nothing, not even a peep.

The last person he can think to ask is Clyde. They don’t spend as much time together as they used to but Clyde is still a good friend. His best, Craig would say, because Tweek doesn’t fit into any kind of label he knows how to categorize. 

Clyde looks annoyed when he opens the door and finds Craig there. The strong scent of savory meat wafts out from the house, the sound of utensils clicking together. The Donovans are having dinner.

“I haven’t seen him in a while.” Clyde sighs, leaning against the jamb. 

“A while?” Craig presses.

“A couple days at least?” Clyde’s brows crumple. “Tuesday, maybe. After supper. He was walking around near the square.” 

Craig had met Tweek after that, soothing his neurotic friend from whatever episode caused him to pace the square so many times his feet bled. He’d sat with Tweek out by that shed, tried to coax him into saying something, anything at all. But his mouth was shut tighter than a coffin, and Craig hasn’t seen him since. 

It’s not the first time Tweek’s disappeared. But it’s the first time he cares enough to ask someone who’ll know. 

Dust gathers in clouds around his feet as he walks the distance to Tweek’s house. The humidity is cloying, the air thick and heady with moisture, sweat soaking through his shirt. An ominous weight pressing down upon him from the darkening sky.

His knuckles rap on the weathered wood. Richard is the one who opens it, of course, because Craig rarely sees Tweek’s mother these days.

“Ah,  Craig, what a wonderful day. How can I --” 

_ Where’s Tweek _ , he asks, and all he gets is a smile that barely wrinkles the corner of Richard’s grey, empty eyes. 

“Ah-- you know son, when I was your age, I would take long walks through the meadows south of town, where the grass grows taller than a house...” 

Useless. Craig doesn’t know why he expected anything else. 

Motes and stillness fill up the house behind Richard’s shoulder, Craig’s neck can stretch just far enough to see. The man shifts to the left to block the view and instead, a few tendrils of blood peek out from Richard’s collar. Long, thin scratches. 

Craig’s eyes flick between them and the butcher’s face and the monologue ends. Chopped off by a mouth in a tight line. 

“Go home, boy,” He says, and slams the door in Craig’s face. 

Craig stands for a moment, jaw set. He thinks of the meat cellar beneath the house. Where animals can scream and not be heard in the waking world. 

He decides he doesn’t like Tweek’s father.

 


	4. sixteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel like i missed the tone a bit but here we go

Craig lets his blessed cross shine on his black button down, hands in his pockets. He's sweating through his shirt but his steps are light; a nice change. His father's eyes twinkled as he rubbed his thumb across Craig’s forehead, his chest swelled with pride and Craig feels like he’s done something _right_ for once. The ash rests heavy and fragrant on his skin.

Tweek pops his head over the banister and shrieks before Craig can even get out a hello. One look at Craig and his face contorts into an ugly, wretched thing.  
  
Craig tries to ask _what’s wrong_ but then he shouts a long line of words like--

“--how _dare_ you who do you t-thinkyou _are_ you _bastard_ , you--”

But Craig can't follow any of it, so he just stands there while Tweek screams at him, those grey eyes wide and bloodshot, teeth blunted and bared.

He’s never seen Tweek so angry. He doesn’t even know what he did wrong. Tweek shoves him and his fists clench but he’s afraid to have it come to blows, afraid he would lose -- though he’s taller by a head, he’s rail thin to Tweek’s solid build. He’s strong from working the pens and Craig is nothing but a twig for him to snap in half.

After, when Craig can't bear to go home, he finds Clyde and Clyde’s friend Token out in the fields and sits with his head buried in his hands.  
  
They know he's crying. He knows they won't tell.

“He’s wrong, all wrong,” Token tells him, stretching out in the grass.

Clyde perks up. “I talked to Bebe who talked to Susie who tried to kiss him once. Said he blistered all up. He’s cursed, or something. He’s vile.”

“Fuck you, he’s not,” Craig insists. “He’s--” _my friend_ , he wants to say, but that’s not right. “He’s _Tweek_.”

But he remembers that day, a few months ago. Half of Tweek’s face covered in hives, and he wouldn’t talk about what happened. They watched the stars that night shoulder to shoulder, and Tweek’s arm didn’t burst into flames.

“Well you kiss him then and see if he blisters,” Clyde jabs.

“Shut the _fuck_ up,” Craig replies, angry. He kicks Clyde hard enough he falls over, rolls a little down the hill. Token cackles.

“I'd never fucking do that,” He says, and pulls his hat back down.  
  
He'd _never_.

 

* * *

 

Craig steps carefully across the baseboards of his house. He’s not as good as Trish is; she’s lighter because she’s younger and doesn’t have the same long limbs as Craig yet, but she will, soon.  
  
He gets out easy, though. Shrugs on his coat over his pajamas, helps the screen door shut quiet before he takes off across the dirt in his bare feet. He knows where Tweek will be tonight, they always meet these nights. Even if Tweek is still mad at him.

The shed looms out of the darkness and Craig shivers. There’s a light on. Tweek is already here, and Craig’s just tall enough to peer in the window.

Candlelight flickers off the tin siding from a handful placed about the small space. Something thick and gray and the size of a man hangs from the ceiling but it’s got hooves and horns -- a goat, and a river of its blood dripping into the center of a circle of dirt. Lines crisscross the center of a crude circle. Craig’s not sure if it’s tar or blood, but he recognizes the diagram from a book he read a long time ago. One of Tweek’s.

His blonde head kneels in the middle, hands caked in clotted blood up to his knobbly elbows. He talks to someone who’s not there, twitching, flailing. Craig doesn’t remember his teeth being so sharp.

Something morbid clutches his gut as Tweek’s head thrashes backwards, his eyes rolled back in his head. Craig can’t look away. Tears cut through the dirt on his cheeks. He seizes forward and retches something dark and slick and black and _sobs_.

Craig throws the door open before he knows what he’s doing.  
  
He wraps his arms around Tweek’s middle and carts him out of the shed. Tweek’s body -- _thin, too thin_ \-- retches twice more and the sharp tang of copper in his nose tells him that’s _blood, he’s puking blood_ .  
  
“What the fuck are you doing, Tweek” he asks, voice tight, “What the _fuck._ ”  
  
Tweek’s coughing, half in his lap, shaking like a leaf. His eyes come back into focus and he’s crying, he’s crying so much.  
  
“I’msorry, I-I’m sorry, I--” He gasps for breath. “I was just trying, wasjusttrying to--”  
  
“Don’t.” Craig says. One of his hands weaves into Tweek’s coarse hair, and he pulls him close. “Just. _what the fuck_ .”  

“Craig,” He croaks. “Craig, Craig-- J-jesus _christ--_ ” He clutches Craig’s sleep shirt. It’s gonna be ruined when he gets home, full of tears and blood and snot. He’s gonna have to burn it.   

He won't speak of this to anyone for as long as he lives.

 

* * *

 

On his way back from the market, he stops by the river.

He remembers when the water was clear. Now it's muddy, silt and soot clogging the banks since they were kids. Choking it into something else. He stares at the grains of sand on the riverbank, under his polished shoes, as if it will give up some forgotten secret.

“What are you doing here,” says a growl from behind him, and somehow, he knows who it is before he even turns.

Underneath the tree sits not Tweek but it is too, and Craig presses his mouth into a line. He’s all gaunt and angles and sallow skin. Inhuman. Leathery wings silhouette his back and it's all too much.

“What is this,” He says. Then, “Is this a fucking trick?”

Tweek laughs, bitter and empty, like gravel under Craig’s shoes. “A trick, sure, it's a f-fucking trick--” His bare shoulders seize, and then calm. Clawed hands fist into the wavy blonde hair tousled around his horns. He tugs at it; sighs. “ _Ngh-_ Whatdoesit matter.”

He shakes his head and stands. The wings fold up behind his back. Even with his disfigured lower half Craig’s taller by a head, but his stomach turns in horror, in surprise and disgust that all of this is painfully _real_.

“Youwannakillme?” he asks, stalking toward Craig, chin up. Menacing, in a way that Tweek has no right being. “F-fucking do it, man.”  
  
Craig feels out of breath. “What? No,” He grinds his teeth. The world’s off balance, tilted at an angle. It's jarring to see Tweek like this but it is still _Tweek_. He can see that scar on his neck just as clear as all those years ago, can feel the heat of the sun and the sweat on his neck just the same.

He steps closer. Lets Tweek watch him, lets his eyes find the other things. That one freckle on Tweek’s cheek that crinkles when he smiles. The way his fingers clench and unclench, like he wants to tug his hair but won’t. All the things Craig knows by heart. He breathes out.  

“Why?” he says, and meet’s Tweek’s eyes. Craig doesn’t know how to really ask, but Tweek gets it.  

“My father, He. _Rrr-_ he made a deal.” He says, quiet now. Sad. “And thisisme. That's all there is to the story.”

Craig stares down at him. His hands touch Tweek’s jaw and the skin is too warm in the hot evening air; smooth as glass.

“What are you doing,” Tweek murmurs.

Since the night at the shed, Craig’s done a lot of thinking about right and wrong, good and evil. The world is black and white according to the church, according to his father’s fiery speeches, but with Tweek all he can find is shades of gray. Like Tweek’s eyes, like the silt in the water.

“Tell me if it hurts,” He says.

They kiss there, by the river bank. On the place where Tweek’s blood painted the water red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


End file.
